Disk Management

Disk Structure

Disk Scheduling

Disk Management

Swap-Space Management

Performance Issues

Disk Structure

Disk drives are addressed as large 1-dimensional arrays of

logical blocks, where

the logical block is the smallest unit of transfer.

The 1-dimensional array of logical blocks is mapped into the

sectors of the disk

sequentially.
Sector 0 is the first sector of the first track on the outermost
cylinder.
Mapping proceeds in order through that track, then the rest
of the tracks
in that cylinder, and then through the rest of the cylinders
from outermost
to innermost.

Disk Scheduling

The operating system is responsible for using hardware

efficiently for the disk

drives, this means having a fast access time and disk
bandwidth.

Access time has two major components

Seek time is the time for the disk are to move the heads to
the cylinder
containing the desired sector
Rotational latency is the additional time waiting for the disk
to rotate the
desired sector to the disk head.

Minimize seek time

Seek time seek distance

Disk bandwidth is the total number of bytes transferred,

Disk Scheduling (Cont.)

Several algorithms exist to schedule the servicing of disk I/O
requests.
We illustrate them with a request queue (0-199).
98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67
Head pointer 53

FCFS

SSTF

Selects the request with the minimum seek time from the

current head
position.

SSTF scheduling is a form of SJF scheduling; may cause

starvation of some
requests.

Illustration shows total head movement of 236 cylinders.

SSTF (Cont.)

SCAN

The disk arm starts at one end of the disk, and moves

toward the other

end, servicing requests until it gets to the other end of
the disk, where
the head movement is reversed and servicing
continues.

Sometimes called the elevator algorithm.

Illustration shows total head movement of 208

cylinders

SCAN (Cont.)

C-SCAN

Provides a more uniform wait time than SCAN.

The head moves from one end of the disk to the

other.
servicing requests as it goes. When it reaches
the other end,
however, it immediately returns to the beginning
of the disk,
without servicing any requests on the return trip.

Treats the cylinders as a circular list that wraps

around from
the last cylinder to the first one

C-SCAN (Cont.)

Selecting a Disk-Scheduling Algorithm

SSTF is common and has a natural appeal

SCAN and C-SCAN perform better for systems that place a

heavy
load on the disk.

Performance depends on the number and types of requests.

Requests for disk service can be influenced by the file-

allocation method.

The disk-scheduling algorithm should be written as a

separate module of
the operating system, allowing it to be replaced with a
different algorithm if
necessary.

Either SSTF or LOOK is a reasonable choice for the default

Disk Management

Low-level formatting, or physical formatting Dividing a

disk into sectors

that the disk controller can read and write.

To use a disk to hold files, the operating system still needs

to record its own

data structures on the disk.
Partition the disk into one or more groups of cylinders.
Logical formatting or making a file system.

Boot block initializes system.

The bootstrap is stored in ROM.
Bootstrap loader program.

Methods such as sector sparing used to handle bad blocks.

Swap-Space Management

Swap-space Virtual memory uses disk space as an extension of

main memory.
Swap-space can be carved out of the normal file system, or, more
commonly, it
can be in a separate disk partition.
Swap-space management

4.3BSD allocates swap space when process starts; holds

text segment

(the program) and data segment.

Kernel uses swap maps to track swap-space use.

Solaris 2 allocates swap space only when a page is forced

out of physical

memory, not when the virtual memory

page is first created.